Hortense - John S. C. Abbott

Hortense de Beauharnais was the daughter of Josephine, the wife of Napoleon's brother Louis, and the mother of Napoleon III. Her life spanned the era from the French Revolution throughout the Napoleonic Wars and the tumultuous years of the first French Republic, and provides insight into both the political developments of the age, and the domestic relationships of the extended Bonaparte family.

Preface

The French Revolution was perhaps as important an event as has occurred
in the history of nations. It was a drama in three acts. The first was
the Revolution itself, properly so called, with its awful scenes of
terror and of blood—the exasperated millions struggling against the
accumulated oppression of ages.

The second act in the drama was the overthrow of the Directory by
Napoleon, and the introduction of the Consulate and the Empire; the
tremendous struggle against the combined dynasties of Europe; the
demolition of the Empire, and the renewed crushing of the people by the
triumph of the nobles and the kings.

Then came the third act in the drama—perhaps the last, perhaps not—in
which the French people again drove out the Bourbons, re-established the
Republican Empire, with its principle of equal rights for all, and
placed upon the throne the heir of the great Emperor.

No man can understand the career of Napoleon I. without being acquainted
with those scenes of anarchy and terror which preceded his reign. No man
can understand the career of Napoleon III. unless familiar with the
struggle of the people against the despots in the Revolution, their
triumph in the Empire, their defeat in its overthrow, and their renewed
triumph in its restoration.

Hortense was intimately associated with all these scenes. Her father
fell beneath the slide of the guillotine; her mother was imprisoned and
doomed to die; and she and her brother were turned penniless into the
streets. By the marriage of her mother with Napoleon, she became the
daughter of the Emperor, and one of the most brilliant and illustrious
ladies of the imperial court. The triumph of the Allies sent her into
exile, where her influence and her instruction prepared her son to
contribute powerfully to the restoration of the Empire, and to reign
with ability which is admired by his friends and acknowledged by his
foes. The mother of Napoleon III. never allowed her royally-endowed son
to forget, even in the gloomiest days of exile and of sorrow, that it
might yet be his privilege to re-establish the Republican Empire, and to
restore the dynasty of the people from its overthrow by the despotic
Allies.

In this brief record of the life of one who experienced far more than
the usual vicissitudes of humanity, whose career was one of the saddest
upon record, and who ever exhibited virtues which won the enthusiastic
love of all who knew her, the writer has admitted nothing which can not
be sustained by incontrovertible evidence, and has suppressed nothing
sustained by any testimony worthy of a moment's respect. This history
will show that Hortense had her faults. Who is without them? There are
not many, however, who will read these pages without profound admiration
for the character of one of the noblest of women, and without finding
the eye often dimmed, in view of her heart-rending griefs.